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1、,Cedar Gulch was, in 1851, a flourishing camp. There had been some good findhat did he say? the new-comer asked. 15 I heard him say, It is no use your going on like that, mates. If you had gone down he would have got his friends, and then there would have been a general fight, and several would have
2、 got hurt. When you have murderers like these you dont want a fightyou want an execution; and having a sort of natural knack with the pistol, I took it upon myself to be executioner. There was another case, although it didnt happen at the camp I was at, in which a woman was murdered by a half-breed
3、Mexican. I did not hear the circumstances, but it was a shocking bad case. She left a child behind her, and her husband, a little German, went clean off his head. Next morning Limping Frank was missing. All that was known was that he had bought a horse of a man who had come in late the night before,
4、 and was gone. His two mates looked high and low for him, but said at last they guessed he would turn up again. It was well-nigh two months before he came back. He brought back with him a watch and some trinkets that had been stolen from the murdered woman, and it seems that he had followed the fell
5、ow right down into New Mexico, and had shot him there. The man who told me said he never made any talk about it, but was at work as usual the morning after he came back. I tell you I would rather quarrel with Sim Howlett and English Bill together than I would get that little mans dander up. He is a
6、peacemaker too, he is, and many a quarrel he has smoothed down. At one camp we were in we made him a sort of judge, and whenever there was a dispute about claims, or tools, or anything else, we went to him and he decided, and no judge could have gone into the case fairer or given a better judgment;
7、and though, in course, those he decided against were not pleased, they had to put up with it. In thes by the first prospectors, and a rush had of course followed. In many cases first discoveries proved illusive, but it was not so at Cedar Gulch. The ground turned out well, and although no extraordin
8、ary finds were made, the average was good all over the bottom, and there were few who were not doing fairly well. The scene was a busy one. Several hundreds of men were hard at work on the flat, which in winter was the bed of a wide stream, but which in summer was a mere thread of water among the ro
9、cks, scarce enough for washing purposes. Everywhere were piles of stones and rubbish that had been brought up from the shafts; men toiled at windlasses; others emptied the buckets as they came up into swinging troughs or cradles; others again kept these supplied with water, and swung or rocked them,
10、 taking off the large stones that the motion brought to the surface, while the slush and mud ran out at the lower end. New-comers moved about watching the work with eager eyes, wishing that they had had the luck to get there among the early arrivals, and to take up a claim, for every foot of ground
11、far down the valley had already been occupied, and 12 there was now no getting into a claim except by purchasing a share or altogether buying out the present holders. One of the claims that was doing best was held by three men who had worked in partnership for the last two years, and who had been am
12、ong the first to arrive at Cedar Gulch. They were known among the others as English Bill, Sim Howlett, and Limping Frank. Sim Howlett was perhaps the leader of the party. He had been one of the earliest gold-diggers, and was a square, powerfully built man. He was a man of few words, but the words wh
13、en spoken were forcible. He was by no means quarrelsome, but was one whom few cared to quarrel with, even in a place where serious quarrels were of constant occurrence, and where revolvers cracked so often that the sound of a fray excited but little attention. English Bill was a tall wiry man, hot o
14、f temper, but a general favourite. Generous with his money, always ready to lend a helping hand to anyone who was down on his luck, he also was a capital worker, and had, in spite of his rough clothes and the use of language as rough as that of his companions, a certain air which told that, like man
15、y others in the diggings, he was a gentleman by birth. Why these two men should have taken up with Limping Frank as a comrade was a matter of surprise to those who knew them. They were both men in the prime of life, while he was at least ten years their senior. His hair was already white; his face w
16、as that of a student rather than a miner, with a gentle and almost womanly expression. His frame was slight, and looked altogether incapable of hard work, and he walked with a distinct limp, the result of a bullet wound in the hip. And yet there were men in the gulch who, having known the trio at other diggings, declared that they would rather quarrel either with English Bill or Sim Howlett than with Limping Frank, a
